I used to know how to change the formatting ($$, %, decimals, etc.) of a column like this in R11, but I am struggling in R12.  Reference the image below.  The YTD Labor Hours was a metric I created and simply pulled in.  The PY YTD Labor Hours was created by clicking Value Field Settings for YTD Labor Hours and adding in a new column for Last Year.  For some reason it automatically formatted the column as $$ even though it should be a regular number with comma separators.  Any idea how to fix this?  Thanks, all!

Apologies for asking a question instead of answering yours @Molly Meinert but how can you change it in R11?

More the fact that I have a column with numbers in but want it to show as a currency

Without having access to the R11 environment, I can't tell you step for step.  But I know I used to be able to right click on columns similar to that and under formatting it had the option to change.  You may have had to do it in the ad hoc and not the actual table.  I can't remember.  Apptio folks - If I'm wrong and that was never possible, I apologize, but I know there was a way to do it!  We had to deal with this type of thing a lot in R11.

For R11, are you talking about the =NumberFormat() formula?  You may be talking reporting surface and not data side, tho.  And pinging @Chris Davidson re Molly's R12 question.

Hey Julie, 

The way I've done it before may be a bit of a cheat, but it seems to work and calculate just fine. On reports you can add a formula column after the original you have and put =NumberFormat(Target Column,"£###,###") and it should return what you're after. 

For some reason I can't get that working properly in a dataset, which is another reason I think it's a bit of a cheat, so if you did want to do it in dataset it may have to be done with another method.

Thanks Oli, this one worked on the report

Good to hear!  

Hi Molly,

I'm only in R11 so I'm not sure if this will be the same, but I got the same issue when using Labor Headcount, then doing the date dropdown and selecting YTD.

If you can highlight the new field that has the $ you don't want, and you have the option to edit that field, then you should be able to fix it!

Click on edit, and it should bring up this (or hopefully a similar) box:

I circled where the pesky $ is coming from, so if you change the format to Number, it should go back to looking like a normal number

Hopefully this helps and isn't too different to R12!

Edit:@Julie Batty I just realised this will probably be what you're after too. If you have a column that you can edit, you can change it to be in currency format

Hey @Oliver Smith!  That's exactly what I was trying to remember from R11 to tell @Julie Batty!  Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way in R12.  In the image below you are seeing my Data tab when I have the column in question highlighted.  I may have to do your workaround with the =NumberFormat to try to get this to work

Thanks!

That's annoying  Yeah you may have to insert a formula column and replicate the =PreviousYear bit of it, but use =NumberFormat(PreviousYear(YTD Labor Hours),"###,###") Or something along those lines. 

Always a pain when you can sometimes edit a column and sometimes not :/ 

I ran into that deal one time where you can edit some columns, but not others.  I cannot for the life of me remember why that is.  Bet @Chris Davidson knows

We can only edit columns (top Ribbon > Data > Edit) if they were inserted from the Ribbon (Data > Insert).

And, we'll be unable to edit even those columns if any fields are present in the Columns section of the ad hoc query configuration window. If needed, temporarily remove field(s) from Columns section, edit table columns as needed, then put back the field(s) into Columns section.

Thank you, Chris!!